🥛 Is the crypto bottom already in? 🤔

GM. This is Milk Road, the secret cheat code your group chat doesn't know you have.

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

✍️ Bullish, but not yet convinced.
🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Crypto May Be Setting Up For A Massive Bull Market w/ John Gillen.
🍪 Senator Moreno: banks are in full panic mode over the CLARITY Act.

Bridge just released a free guide called the “The Stablecoin Playbook” that covers the most prominent real-world use cases for stablecoins. Download the free guide now.

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MONDAY HUDDLE: BULLISH, BUT NOT YET CONVINCED 👥

It's Monday. We just wrapped our weekly content huddle, and as always, we’re giving you a peek into our thinking.

Here's where our heads right now, in a single sentence:

Tilting bullish, but nobody on the team is ready to plant a flag and call it.

There's a real argument brewing that the crypto bear market has been a lot longer than people think. Most people are calling it ~8 months, starting with the carnage of October 10th:

Source: TradingView

But John (our resident macro nerd) thinks the real top could well have been January 2025 - an idea originally floated by Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise.

Starting from around that point in time, a lot of Bitcoin fundamentals started to chop sideways while many alts quietly bled out 80-90%.

If he's right, we're ~16 months into this thing. Which would mean the bottom is really getting close.

(Or already in.)

Source: Bitwise Investments

The encouraging part: Bitcoin has gone a long stretch without breaking down. The longer that holds, the less likely we are to revisit the lows.

But - and this is a big but - we still haven't seen the move that confirms the flip.

John put it like this: he's not hung up on specific price levels anymore. He wants a decisive move - a "collapse to the upside" that clears the order books.

Right now, Bitcoin is doing the slow-grind thing - "climbing a wall of worry," as the saying goes. Encouraging, but not conclusive.

The risk: this is still just a retest of the bear market resistance band, where price pokes above, lingers, then rolls over.

Ok, but what about the rest of the crypto market?

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MONDAY HUDDLE: BULLISH, BUT NOT YET CONVINCED (P2) 👥

In the alt space, John is watching things like:

ETH reclaiming 2,500.
SUI strength (a retail tell).
More breakouts like ONDO (up ~60% on a Ripple/JP Morgan/Mastercard partnership).

These are all solid tells.

But the ‘this could ruin everything’ wildcard we can’t ignore:

The CLARITY Act.

For the uninitiated, the CLARITY Act would set the rules of the road for crypto in the U.S. - who regulates what, developer responsibility, the whole package.

A real chunk of the current bullishness is likely made up of capital that’s front-running its passage.

This morning’s initial read: 79% chance of passage on Polymarket.

…but by the time we were in our meeting? It had cratered to ~62%.

(A 17-point drop in about 30 minutes.)

Source: Polymarket

When odds move like that, somebody usually knows something.

The new sticking point is Senator Gillibrand pushing an ethics provision - basically a rule that people in government can't launch crypto projects. Which is a bit of a problem when the sitting president (who has to sign off on the whole thing) is deeply involved in crypto.

If they can't find a compromise and the bill dies, John thinks that's a "pretty significant headwind" for the market short-term.

(We're interviewing Galaxy's Alex Thorn later this week to get a sharper read, so subscribe to The Milk Road Show here.)

Now, zooming out to macro: the S&P 500 has now strung together six straight green weeks.

Hell yeah!

… but that doesn't go on forever. John expects some kind of breather - maybe a retest of 7,200 or 7,000 (and if the S&P pulls back, does Bitcoin shrug it off, or follow it down?).

Take all of the above, mix it together, and here’s what we’re watching for: